New Hanover County School Board: Security is ‘top priority’

NEW HANOVER COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — School safety is the current topic of discussion around the country. Now the New Hanover County School Board is taking a look at current school security since the Parkland Florida school shooting.

“School safety is paramount. If a child does not feel safe, if the parents don’t feel the child is safe they aren’t going to send the child to school,” board member Janice Cavenaugh said.

Only a few days after the most recent school shooting, the New Hanover County School Board said a lot of concern has been raised.

“We need to stay on top of students that pose a risk to our school system,” Cavenaugh said.

Cavenaugh said they decided they need another school audit to make sure they are up to date with student protection.

“The things we’re doing to date seem to be working well, but we’re not going to sit on that. We’re going to take action and see what we need to do,” board member Bruce Shell said.

Mental health as well as having officers at every school full-time were items in the conversation.

“There are at least two officers at every high school, most of them have three officers. One for every middle school and every elementary school has at least a partial officers, which means that some of the elementary schools share an officer. We need to look into that and see if we need to beef that up,” Cavenaugh said.

Shell said he’s not sure there is a way to cover every possible scenario.

“If you are on your toes, and you are aware, and you have students that are free to speak about what they see and professionals are in a position to take action when they hear it you can minimize an awful lot of this,” Shell said.

Cavenaugh said this is not a topic that will be going away anytime soon. Shell added that there is always room for improvement and they will do everything they can to keep students safe.